Kate Bradbrook
BBC Look East

The murder trial of the fiancé of Hertfordshire author Helen Bailey has been continuing at St Albans Crown Court.

Ms Bailey, 51, was found dead in a cesspit at her house in Royston in July 2016. She had not been seen since 11 April.

Ian Stewart, 56, is accused of drugging his wife-to-be before suffocating her and throwing her in the pit underneath the couple's garage on Baldock Road.

The prosecution have been giving their closing speech.

They said the killing of Helen Bailey was a "long plan" and a "wicked" act by the accused, adding Ian Stewart was "a liar and an actor".

They claimed the notion two men named Nick and Joe kidnapped the author and brought her back to her Royston home drugged before dumping her in a pit was "quite absurd".

Ms Bailey was "grossly deceived by someone who was praying on her", the prosecution added.

Mr Stewart denies murder, preventing a lawful burial, fraud, and three counts of perverting the course of justice.

The trial continues.

John Devine
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

"Something needs to be done before someone dies or gets run over or hurt."

Those were the words of Sarah Skinner, the headteacher at Queen's Drive Infant School in Peterborough. 

I met her this morning after the city council said hundreds of fines had been handed out to drivers who parked illegally outside Peterborough schools.

I saw for myself the problem the school has - there just aren't enough spaces around for parents to drop their children off. 

Ms Skinner told me the situation was "horrendous". 

She has seen parents parking on the yellow zigzags, double and triple parking, and has witnessed road rage where parents have sworn in front of pupils. 

She told me the situation was so "dangerous" she feared for children's safety coming to school, but one solution was for parents to park "nearby and then drop off by walking here".

BBC One

In case you missed it, Cambridgeshire actor Warwick Davis featured on the hit BBC One show Who Do You Think You Are last night. 

The film and TV star owes his big break aged 11 to his paternal grandmother Edith, who heard a radio ad "looking for short people to appear in [Star Wars] Return of the Jedi". 

As he looked back through his family history, he found humanity and humour in some uncomfortable stories. 

One part of his journey saw him travel to Northampton and Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk on the hunt for facts about a musical ancestor.

You can watch the episode on the BBC iPlayer.

Alex Pope
BBC Local Live

"This initiative is so good." 

Those are the words of Cambridge MP Daniel Zeichner, who's got behind a student event in the city to hand out food and drink to the homeless. 

It's been organised after video footage appearing to show a student burning a £20 note in front of a homeless man caused outrage.

Image source, Thinkstock

Mr Zeichner, Labour, said: "It shows that the vast majority of students are good positive people and one stupid action by one young man has brought shame on our city and our university.

"But this is a positive response and that's the message that should go out."   

It's hoped hundreds of students will hand out donations to the city's homeless tonight.

John Devine
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

About 200 fines, external have been handed out to parents parking badly outside schools in Peterborough since last April.

The action has been taken by the SaferPeterborough Prevention and Enforcement Service (PES), which says the worst offenders are outside Queen's Drive Infant School, Arthur Mellows Village College in Glinton, Discovery Primary School in Walton and Paston Ridings Primary School.

Image source, SaferPeterborough Prevention and Enforcement Service

To highlight the problem a video has been released, external showing the problems officers frequently see.

Alex Pope
BBC Local Live

It's hoped hundreds of students from Cambridge University will gather in the city tonight to hand out food and drink to the city's rough sleepers.

The "Let's Love Cambridge's Homeless" event has been organised by Ella Jenkinson from Emmanuel College, after footage emerged purporting to show a student burning a £20 note in front of a homeless man.

Image source, PA

She said a number of items had been donated which will be packaged up to give out to those in need.

Ms Jenkinson said it's been organised to "show some love rather than hate".

Elizabeth Rizzini
BBC Look East weather

There's plenty of cloud around this morning, with a few mist patches, but all of this will lift and clear, and we'll get some sunshine coming through this afternoon.

Feeling quite pleasant, with a slight chance of some light showers, but you'll be unlucky to catch one.

Top temperature: 11C (52F). 

Get the full forecast where you live, from BBC Weather.

Alex Pope
BBC Local Live

Good morning and welcome back to regular updates from all of us here at Local Live Cambridgeshire. 

Between now and 18:00 we'll be bringing you all your news, sport, travel and in a moment a full weather report with Elizabeth Rizzini. 

But before that full report, the good news is the sun is already out in Cambridgeshire and it's set to stay as this great photo from BBC Weather Watcher Impington Geoff shows. 

Adam Jinkerson
BBC Local Live

Live updates for Cambridgeshire have now finished for the day. We'll return tomorrow from 08:00.

Scroll back through the feed for anything you may have missed, including...

• More on Cambridgeshire County Council's budget meeting
• A warning from Hinchingbrooke over A&E admissions
• More on a setback for a new stadium for Cambridge City FC

Stay tuned to this feed overnight for any breaking news from around the county, but we'll see you again bright and early tomorrow.

Have a great evening.

Peter Swan
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire sport

Cambridge United striker Barry Corr made every U's fan breathe a sigh of relief when he equalised in the 89th minute against Yeovil last night.

Not only did it salvage a point for the U's, it was also Corr's first goal since getting injured back in 2016.

The striker was struck down with a knee injury 13 months ago and has since had surgery.

He told BBC Radio Cambridgeshire it was "great to be back".

Image source, Getty Images

On returning

"I'm obviously delighted to come on and make an impact," he said.

"I want to apologise to the fans for it taking so long.

"The main thing in my head was always walking out at the start of the game and lining up on the pitch.

"I just can't wait for that feeling, to feel like a footballer."

On his injury

"It was probably the hardest time of my life.

"There's lots of times when you're on your own in the gym just pushing through pain, and you wonder if it will ever happen.

"I was just desperate to get back out there."

On the future

"It's just a case of taking it game by game.

"Getting the minutes in.

"It's almost like a pre-season for me at the moment."

Adam Jinkerson
BBC Local Live

Every police force in the East of England saw a rise in hate crime reports following the Brexit vote, a study by the Press Association found.

The figures, recorded between July and September 2016, show a rise on the three month period before the EU referendum on 23 June.

Image source, Getty Images

Here's how the reports break down by counties in the region, ranked by the size of their change...

• Essex - 376 (up 41%)
• Suffolk - 123 (up 37%)
• Hertfordshire - 266 (up 30%)
• Norfolk - 130 (up 25%)
• Thames Valley - 286 (up 20%)    
• Cambridgeshire - 179 (up 9%)
• Bedfordshire - 133 (up 6%)
• Northamptonshire - 79 (up 4%)

Every force in the region, bar Northamptonshire Police, recorded their highest quarterly figures since comparable records began in April 2012.

In total, 14,295 incidents of hate crime were recorded by police forces across the country between July and September - up 27%.

In Dorset, the number of incidents jumped 100% and Nottinghamshire 75%.

Meet the mums who decided not just to watch their daughters at football training but get involved on their own....

There's not long left to sign up for the FA People's Cup - the deadline is Sunday, 19 February - and you can find out how to here.

Adam Jinkerson
BBC Local Live

It turns out the Hinchingbrooke Hospital "spa" is not open for business...

This tweet comes as Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon looks to make people aware of the dangers of abusing the system.

Other examples of inappropriate A&E use at the hospital in the past year include...

• A woman who wanted formal confirmation of her pregnancy, despite having had two positive pregnancy tests
• A patient with a splinter in his finger
• A man who cut himself shaving, even though you couldn't see the cut

• Patients with headaches and hiccups

In the last three months, 10,839 people attended A&E at Hinchingbrooke Hospital. Of that figure, only 3,536 required treatment there, the hospital said.

Phil Walmsley, chief operating officer, said A&E is a "precious resource".

"We ask people to use it wisely to ensure it continues to work well for them. This means only coming to A&E when people really need urgent medical assistance that cannot be managed by their GP or pharmacist."

Helen Burchell
BBC News

You might have read about an ambitious project to create a Lego version of the Great Fen to help raise money for conservation work...

Well, we've been sent a few photographs showing how it's all coming along.

Image source, Mike Addis

Mike Addis and Catherine Weightman, well-known for building giant Lego Christmas decorations in their Huntingdon home, are using about 500,000 bricks to create a 10m (32ft) 3D "map" of the wetland, complete with Lego "native species".

Great Fen is a long-term Wildlife Trust project aimed at conserving the land between Huntingdon and Peterborough.

Image source, Mike Addis

The couple, together with volunteers, have begun building parts of the Fen, including Holme Fen, where a WW2 Spitfire crashed and was recently excavated. You can see the Lego plane on the picture above.

Image source, Mike Addis

For the rest of this week, members of the public have booked in to Lego-building sessions at Hinchingbrooke Country Park to create some of the native species that inhabit the wetland. 

As you can see from the giant spider sitting alongside a pumping station above, they're not expecting everything to be to scale!

The map's going to get bigger and populated with more giant creepy-crawlies, and less-scary things like Lego birds, as the week progresses.

The sessions are all booked up, but we'll bring you more pictures as we get them.

Sam Edwards
BBC Radio Cambridgeshire

There's been another delay in Cambridge City's plans to build a new stadium in south Cambridgeshire.

The appeal against planning permission was upheld at the Court of Appeal in London this morning.

Cambridge City first applied for permission to build a new ground in Sawston in 2013 after leaving their previous home on Milton Road in Cambridge. They currently play at St Ives.

Image source, Cambridge City FC

The Sawston site sits on greenbelt land, so was recommended for refusal by officers, but planning was approved by councillors.

However, an appeal was lodged by Cambridgeshire resident Chris Oakley on the grounds that councillors didn't justify their approval - and that has today been upheld.

It means the council could now take the matter to the Supreme Court.

But if they don't, it will go back to square one, and the football club will have to re-apply for planning permission.

A court hears from a man who claims to have seen author Helen Bailey weeks after she went missing.

Adam Jinkerson
BBC Local Live

Wisbech-based Paralympian, Jody Cundy, knows a "stay-away" protest could be considered hypocritical after he labelled the UCI Para-cycling World Championships "a joke".

The UCI, cycling's world governing body, officially announced last Friday that Los Angeles would host the four-day event from 2 to 5 March - giving athletes just seven weeks to prepare.

At the time Cundy vented his fury at the decision, saying only 77 entrants are now taking part in the competition, in a city that is bidding to host the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Cundy, 38, leads a 14-rider Great Britain team, but 12 of the squad are competing as six tandems. Jon Gildea is the other individual rider. 

He told Press Association Sport: "The fact I'm current world champion, Paralympic champion and I'm always one of the first to moan when we don't have any events... I felt it would be hypocritical to sit at home and not do anything."

Cundy hopes the World Championships will become an annual event, like its able-bodied equivalent and the para-cycling road event.

UCI president Brian Cookson said the organisation was "conscious" that some athletes are yet to return to full-intensity training.

"We believe that holding these UCI Para-cycling Track World Championships for the first time ever in a post-Paralympic season signifies notable progress and will enable our athletes to benefit from an enriched calendar as the discipline continues to develop," he added.

Adam Jinkerson
BBC Local Live

Peterborough City Hospital (PCH) could see an increase of millions of pounds in business rates, new figures suggest.

First reported by the Daily Telegraph, external, the alleged increase could be part of a national rise in rates for NHS hospitals and GP surgeries of more than £635m in the next five years.

Analysis by Gerald Eve, a firm which advises businesses on rates and property, says PCH could see rates rise from £2.5m to £4.8m by 2021.

Peterborough and Stamford Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said rising business rates means it needs to put "additional cost efficiencies in place" on top of existing savings.

A government spokesman said: "All properties, including hospitals, have their rateable values set independently by the Valuation Office Agency and taxpayers have the right to appeal the VOA's valuation.

"This revaluation improves the fairness of rate bills by making sure they more closely reflect the property market. 

"We have also introduced a £3.6bn transitional relief scheme to limit the impact of any increases." 

BBC Weather

After a murky morning, any extensive mist and low cloud will gradually lift, with light patchy rain starting off the afternoon.

Longer spells of rain will then spread from the west later, perhaps heavy at times.

There will be light winds through the day and it will feel mild. Highs of 11C (52F). 

BBC Sport

Shrewsbury Town manager Paul Hurst says his side "lacked energy" in their defeat away to Peterborough United last night.

Stephen Humphrys was sent off 10 minutes into the second half and Hurst said the combination of playing with 10 men and weekend's fixture away to Scunthorpe eventually caught up with them.

Shrewsbury dropped to 18th after the defeat and are now four points away from the relegation zone.